The Quest for the Temple Key

Gahrspat swore under his breath. Loath he was to let the human children leave the cavern his master had set him to watch. Long he had waited. Time had little meaning to him, but even so, he knew that, measured in human “years,” he had lingered in the Cave of Parting for hundreds of them. Eons.

The temptation to follow the children into the howling snow—to maim, to kill, to feed—was very strong. He nourished the feeling, strengthening the temptation so that it acted like a fever, warming up the frigid stone that his body had been in for so long, embedded in the walls of the grotto. It pleased him to have this elemental, throbbing hatred pulse through his body.

Arching his back so that his slab-like head faced upwards, Gahrspat thrust his fists towards the ceiling and murmured an incantation fitting his dark mood. Abruptly, his massive wings stretched out from his sides and swung up over his head, forming a canopy. Savage light burst from the ceiling as several stalactites ruptured from the rock overhead and crashed to the floor all around him. Withdrawing his wings from over his head, Gahrspat surveyed the destruction he’d wrought, a smile widening across his face. His crimson eyes glowed so fiercely that they cast a bloodred glow on the shattered stone at his feet.

He reveled in his strength and the surging return of raw power in his veins. Oh, his need to destroy was great! But orders were orders. His commander’s instructions had been abundantly clear, even though uttered generations ago. “Wait until someone comes. Do not be discovered. Then report immediately. Do not fail me! Now, go!”